Two level re-order buffer

ABSTRACT

In response to detecting one or more conditions are met, a checkpoint of a current state of a thread may be created. One or more incomplete instructions may be moved from a first level of a re-order buffer to a second level of the re-order buffer. Each incomplete instruction may be currently executing or awaiting execution.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present disclosure pertains to the field of processors and, in particular, to optimizing re-order buffer (ROB) management techniques.

BACKGROUND

ROBs track the lifecycle of micro-operations and/or instructions. ROBs may track an instruction's allocation, execution, retirement, and/or data result. In traditional computer architectures, the size of the ROB had to be increased as the need for the number of instructions to be tracked in parallel increased. This approach, however, has many drawbacks. Namely, increasing the size of the ROB may severely impact circuit timing, area, and power usage due to the additional hardware necessary to support the size increase.

DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

Embodiments are illustrated by way of example and not limitation in the Figures of the accompanying drawings:

FIG. 1A is a block diagram of a system according to one embodiment.

FIG. 1B is a block diagram of a system according to one embodiment.

FIG. 1C is a block diagram of a system according to one embodiment.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a processor according to one embodiment.

FIG. 3A illustrates packed data types according to one embodiment.

FIG. 3B illustrates packed data types according one embodiment.

FIG. 3C illustrates packed data types according to one embodiment.

FIG. 3D illustrates an instruction encoding according to one embodiment.

FIG. 3E illustrates an instruction encoding according to one embodiment.

FIG. 3F illustrates an instruction encoding according to one embodiment.

FIG. 4A illustrates elements of a processor micro-architecture according to one embodiment.

FIG. 4B illustrates elements of a processor micro-architecture according to one embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of a processor according to one embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of a computer system according to one embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram of a computer system according to one embodiment.

FIG. 8 is a block diagram of a computer system according to one embodiment.

FIG. 9 is a block diagram of a system-on-a-chip according to one embodiment.

FIG. 10 is a block diagram of a processor according to one embodiment.

FIG. 11 is a block diagram of an IP core development system according to one embodiment.

FIG. 12 illustrates an architecture emulation system according to one embodiment.

FIG. 13 illustrates a system to translate instructions according to one embodiment.

FIG. 14 illustrates an ROB to track uncommitted instructions according to an embodiment.

FIG. 15 illustrates a two level ROB to track uncommitted instructions according to an embodiment.

FIG. 16 illustrates a method to pseudo-retire entries according to an embodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In the following description, numerous specific details such as processing logic, processor types, micro-architectural conditions, events, enablement mechanisms, and the like are set forth in order to provide a more thorough understanding of embodiments of the present invention. It will be appreciated, however, by one skilled in the art that the invention may be practiced without such specific details. Additionally, some well-known structures, circuits, and the like have not been shown in detail to avoid unnecessarily obscuring embodiments of the present invention.

Although the following embodiments are described with reference to a processor, other embodiments are applicable to other types of integrated circuits and logic devices. Similar techniques and teachings of embodiments of the present invention can be applied to other types of circuits or semiconductor devices that can benefit from higher pipeline throughput and improved performance. The teachings of embodiments of the present invention are applicable to any processor or machine that performs data manipulations. However, the present invention is not limited to processors or machines that perform 512 bit, 256 bit, 128 bit, 64 bit, 32 bit, or 16 bit data operations and can be applied to any processor and machine in which manipulation or management of data is performed. In addition, the following description provides examples, and the accompanying drawings show various examples for the purposes of illustration. However, these examples should not be construed in a limiting sense as they are merely intended to provide examples of embodiments of the present invention rather than to provide an exhaustive list of all possible implementations of embodiments of the present invention.

Although the below examples describe instruction handling and distribution in the context of execution units and logic circuits, other embodiments of the present invention can be accomplished by way of a data or instructions stored on a machine-readable, tangible medium, which when performed by a machine cause the machine to perform functions consistent with at least one embodiment of the invention. In one embodiment, functions associated with embodiments of the present invention are embodied in machine-executable instructions. The instructions can be used to cause a general-purpose or special-purpose processor that is programmed with the instructions to perform the steps of the present invention. Embodiments of the present invention may be provided as a computer program product or software which may include a machine or computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions which may be used to program a computer (or other electronic devices) to perform one or more operations according to embodiments of the present invention. Alternatively, steps of embodiments of the present invention might be performed by specific hardware components that contain fixed-function logic for performing the steps, or by any combination of programmed computer components and fixed-function hardware components.

Instructions used to program logic to perform embodiments of the invention can be stored within a memory in the system, such as DRAM, cache, flash memory, or other storage. Furthermore, the instructions can be distributed via a network or by way of other computer readable media. Thus a machine-readable medium may include any mechanism for storing or transmitting information in a form readable by a machine (e.g., a computer), but is not limited to, floppy diskettes, optical disks, Compact Disc, Read-Only Memory (CD-ROMs), and magneto-optical disks, Read-Only Memory (ROMs), Random Access Memory (RAM), Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (EPROM), Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (EEPROM), magnetic or optical cards, flash memory, or a tangible, machine-readable storage used in the transmission of information over the Internet via electrical, optical, acoustical or other forms of propagated signals (e.g., carrier waves, infrared signals, digital signals, etc.). Accordingly, the computer-readable medium includes any type of tangible machine-readable medium suitable for storing or transmitting electronic instructions or information in a form readable by a machine (e.g., a computer).

A design may go through various stages, from creation to simulation to fabrication. Data representing a design may represent the design in a number of manners. First, as is useful in simulations, the hardware may be represented using a hardware description language or another functional description language. Additionally, a circuit level model with logic and/or transistor gates may be produced at some stages of the design process. Furthermore, most designs, at some stage, reach a level of data representing the physical placement of various devices in the hardware model. In the case where conventional semiconductor fabrication techniques are used, the data representing the hardware model may be the data specifying the presence or absence of various features on different mask layers for masks used to produce the integrated circuit. In any representation of the design, the data may be stored in any form of a machine readable medium. A memory or a magnetic or optical storage such as a disc may be the machine readable medium to store information transmitted via optical or electrical wave modulated or otherwise generated to transmit such information. When an electrical carrier wave indicating or carrying the code or design is transmitted, to the extent that copying, buffering, or re-transmission of the electrical signal is performed, a new copy is made. Thus, a communication provider or a network provider may store on a tangible, machine-readable medium, at least temporarily, an article, such as information encoded into a carrier wave, embodying techniques of embodiments of the present invention.

In modern processors, a number of different execution units are used to process and execute a variety of code and instructions. Not all instructions are created equal as some are quicker to complete while others can take a number of clock cycles to complete. The faster the throughput of instructions, the better the overall performance of the processor. Thus it would be advantageous to have as many instructions execute as fast as possible. However, there are certain instructions that have greater complexity and require more in terms of execution time and processor resources. For example, there are floating point instructions, load/store operations, data moves, etc.

As more computer systems are used in internet, text, and multimedia applications, additional processor support has been introduced over time. In one embodiment, an instruction set may be associated with one or more computer architectures, including data types, instructions, register architecture, addressing modes, memory architecture, interrupt and exception handling, and external input and output (I/O).

In one embodiment, the instruction set architecture (ISA) may be implemented by one or more micro-architectures, which includes processor logic and circuits used to implement one or more instruction sets. Accordingly, processors with different micro-architectures can share at least a portion of a common instruction set. For example, Intel® Pentium 4 processors, Intel® Core™ processors, and processors from Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. of Sunnyvale Calif. implement nearly identical versions of the x86 instruction set (with some extensions that have been added with newer versions), but have different internal designs. Similarly, processors designed by other processor development companies, such as ARM Holdings, Ltd., MIPS, or their licensees or adopters, may share at least a portion a common instruction set, but may include different processor designs. For example, the same register architecture of the ISA may be implemented in different ways in different micro-architectures using new or well-known techniques, including dedicated physical registers, one or more dynamically allocated physical registers using a register renaming mechanism (e.g., the use of a Register Alias Table (RAT), a Reorder Buffer (ROB) and a retirement register file. In one embodiment, registers may include one or more registers, register architectures, register files, or other register sets that may or may not be addressable by a software programmer. In one embodiment, an instruction may include one or more instruction formats. In one embodiment, an instruction format may indicate various fields (number of bits, location of bits, etc.) to specify, among other things, the operation to be performed and the operand(s) on which that operation is to be performed. Some instruction formats may be further broken defined by instruction templates (or sub formats). For example, the instruction templates of a given instruction format may be defined to have different subsets of the instruction format's fields and/or defined to have a given field interpreted differently. In one embodiment, an instruction is expressed using an instruction format (and, if defined, in a given one of the instruction templates of that instruction format) and specifies or indicates the operation and the operands upon which the operation will operate.

Scientific, financial, auto-vectorized general purpose, RMS (recognition, mining, and synthesis), and visual and multimedia applications (e.g., 2D/3D graphics, image processing, video compression/decompression, voice recognition algorithms and audio manipulation) may require the same operation to be performed on a large number of data items. In one embodiment, Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) refers to a type of instruction that causes a processor to perform an operation on multiple data elements. SIMD technology may be used in processors that can logically divide the bits in a register into a number of fixed-sized or variable-sized data elements, each of which represents a separate value. For example, in one embodiment, the bits in a 64-bit register may be organized as a source operand containing four separate 16-bit data elements, each of which represents a separate 16-bit value. This type of data may be referred to as ‘packed’ data type or ‘vector’ data type, and operands of this data type are referred to as packed data operands or vector operands. In one embodiment, a packed data item or vector may be a sequence of packed data elements stored within a single register, and a packed data operand or a vector operand may a source or destination operand of a SIMD instruction (or ‘packed data instruction’ or a ‘vector instruction’). In one embodiment, a SIMD instruction specifies a single vector operation to be performed on two source vector operands to generate a destination vector operand (also referred to as a result vector operand) of the same or different size, with the same or different number of data elements, and in the same or different data element order. SIMD technology, such as that employed by the Intel® Core™ processors having an instruction set including x86, MMX™, Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE), SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1, and SSE4.2 instructions, ARM processors, such as the ARM Cortex® family of processors having an instruction set including the Vector Floating Point (VFP) and/or NEON instructions, and MIPS processors, such as the Loongson family of processors developed by the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has enabled a significant improvement in application performance (Core™ and MMX™ are registered trademarks or trademarks of Intel Corporation of Santa Clara, Calif.).

In one embodiment, destination and source registers/data are generic terms to represent the source and destination of the corresponding data or operation. In some embodiments, they may be implemented by registers, memory, or other storage areas having other names or functions than those depicted. For example, in one embodiment, “DEST1” may be a temporary storage register or other storage area, whereas “SRC1” and “SRC2” may be a first and second source storage register or other storage area, and so forth. In other embodiments, two or more of the SRC and DEST storage areas may correspond to different data storage elements within the same storage area (e.g., a SIMD register). In one embodiment, one of the source registers may also act as a destination register by, for example, writing back the result of an operation performed on the first and second source data to one of the two source registers serving as a destination registers.

FIG. 1A is a block diagram of an exemplary computer system formed with a processor that includes execution units to execute an instruction in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention. System 100 includes a component, such as a processor 102 to employ execution units including logic to perform algorithms for process data, in accordance with the present invention, such as in the embodiment described herein. System 100 is representative of processing systems based on the PENTIUM® III, PENTIUM® 4, Xeon™, Itanium®, XScale™ and/or StrongARM™ microprocessors available from Intel Corporation of Santa Clara, Calif., although other systems (including PCs having other microprocessors, engineering workstations, set-top boxes and the like) may also be used. In one embodiment, sample system 100 may execute a version of the WINDOWS™ operating system available from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., although other operating systems (UNIX and Linux for example), embedded software, and/or graphical user interfaces, may also be used. Thus, embodiments of the present invention are not limited to any specific combination of hardware circuitry and software.

Embodiments are not limited to computer systems. Alternative embodiments of the present invention can be used in other devices such as handheld devices and embedded applications. Some examples of handheld devices include cellular phones, Internet Protocol devices, digital cameras, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and handheld PCs. Embedded applications can include a micro controller, a digital signal processor (DSP), system on a chip, network computers (NetPC), set-top boxes, network hubs, wide area network (WAN) switches, or any other system that can perform one or more instructions in accordance with at least one embodiment.

FIG. 1A is a block diagram of a computer system 100 formed with a processor 102 that includes one or more execution units 108 to perform an algorithm to perform at least one instruction in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention. One embodiment may be described in the context of a single processor desktop or server system, but alternative embodiments can be included in a multiprocessor system. System 100 is an example of a ‘hub’ system architecture. The computer system 100 includes a processor 102 to process data signals. The processor 102 can be a complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, a reduced instruction set computing (RISC) microprocessor, a very long instruction word (VLIW) microprocessor, a processor implementing a combination of instruction sets, or any other processor device, such as a digital signal processor, for example. The processor 102 is coupled to a processor bus 110 that can transmit data signals between the processor 102 and other components in the system 100. The elements of system 100 perform their conventional functions that are well known to those familiar with the art.

In one embodiment, the processor 102 includes a Level 1 (L1) internal cache memory 104. Depending on the architecture, the processor 102 can have a single internal cache or multiple levels of internal cache. Alternatively, in another embodiment, the cache memory can reside external to the processor 102. Other embodiments can also include a combination of both internal and external caches depending on the particular implementation and needs. Register file 106 can store different types of data in various registers including integer registers, floating point registers, status registers, and instruction pointer register.

Execution unit 108, including logic to perform integer and floating point operations, also resides in the processor 102. The processor 102 also includes a microcode (ucode) ROM that stores microcode for certain macroinstructions. For one embodiment, execution unit 108 includes logic to handle a packed instruction set 109. By including the packed instruction set 109 in the instruction set of a general-purpose processor 102, along with associated circuitry to execute the instructions, the operations used by many multimedia applications may be performed using packed data in a general-purpose processor 102. Thus, many multimedia applications can be accelerated and executed more efficiently by using the full width of a processor's data bus for performing operations on packed data. This can eliminate the need to transfer smaller units of data across the processor's data bus to perform one or more operations one data element at a time.

Alternate embodiments of an execution unit 108 can also be used in micro controllers, embedded processors, graphics devices, DSPs, and other types of logic circuits. System 100 includes a memory 120. Memory 120 can be a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) device, a static random access memory (SRAM) device, flash memory device, or other memory device. Memory 120 can store instructions and/or data represented by data signals that can be executed by the processor 102.

A system logic chip 116 is coupled to the processor bus 110 and memory 120. The system logic chip 116 in the illustrated embodiment is a memory controller hub (MCH). The processor 102 can communicate to the MCH 116 via a processor bus 110. The MCH 116 provides a high bandwidth memory path 118 to memory 120 for instruction and data storage and for storage of graphics commands, data and textures. The MCH 116 is to direct data signals between the processor 102, memory 120, and other components in the system 100 and to bridge the data signals between processor bus 110, memory 120, and system I/O 122. In some embodiments, the system logic chip 116 can provide a graphics port for coupling to a graphics controller 112. The MCH 116 is coupled to memory 120 through a memory interface 118. The graphics card 112 is coupled to the MCH 116 through an Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) interconnect 114.

System 100 uses a proprietary hub interface bus 122 to couple the MCH 116 to the I/O controller hub (ICH) 130. The ICH 130 provides direct connections to some I/O devices via a local I/O bus. The local I/O bus is a high-speed I/O bus for connecting peripherals to the memory 120, chipset, and processor 102. Some examples are the audio controller, firmware hub (flash BIOS) 128, wireless transceiver 126, data storage 124, legacy I/O controller containing user input and keyboard interfaces, a serial expansion port such as Universal Serial Bus (USB), and a network controller 134. The data storage device 124 can comprise a hard disk drive, a floppy disk drive, a CD-ROM device, a flash memory device, or other mass storage device.

For another embodiment of a system, an instruction in accordance with one embodiment can be used with a system on a chip. One embodiment of a system on a chip comprises of a processor and a memory. The memory for one such system is a flash memory. The flash memory can be located on the same die as the processor and other system components. Additionally, other logic blocks such as a memory controller or graphics controller can also be located on a system on a chip.

FIG. 1B illustrates a data processing system 140 which implements the principles of one embodiment of the present invention. It will be readily appreciated by one of skill in the art that the embodiments described herein can be used with alternative processing systems without departure from the scope of embodiments of the invention.

Computer system 140 comprises a processing core 159 capable of performing at least one instruction in accordance with one embodiment. For one embodiment, processing core 159 represents a processing unit of any type of architecture, including but not limited to a CISC, a RISC or a VLIW type architecture. Processing core 159 may also be suitable for manufacture in one or more process technologies and by being represented on a machine readable media in sufficient detail, may be suitable to facilitate said manufacture.

Processing core 159 comprises an execution unit 142, a set of register file(s) 145, and a decoder 144. Processing core 159 also includes additional circuitry (not shown) which is not necessary to the understanding of embodiments of the present invention. Execution unit 142 is used for executing instructions received by processing core 159. In addition to performing typical processor instructions, execution unit 142 can perform instructions in packed instruction set 143 for performing operations on packed data formats. Packed instruction set 143 includes instructions for performing embodiments of the invention and other packed instructions. Execution unit 142 is coupled to register file 145 by an internal bus. Register file 145 represents a storage area on processing core 159 for storing information, including data. As previously mentioned, it is understood that the storage area used for storing the packed data is not critical. Execution unit 142 is coupled to decoder 144. Decoder 144 is used for decoding instructions received by processing core 159 into control signals and/or microcode entry points. In response to these control signals and/or microcode entry points, execution unit 142 performs the appropriate operations. In one embodiment, the decoder is used to interpret the opcode of the instruction, which will indicate what operation should be performed on the corresponding data indicated within the instruction.

Processing core 159 is coupled with bus 141 for communicating with various other system devices, which may include but are not limited to, for example, synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM) control 146, static random access memory (SRAM) control 147, burst flash memory interface 148, personal computer memory card international association (PCMCIA)/compact flash (CF) card control 149, liquid crystal display (LCD) control 150, direct memory access (DMA) controller 151, and alternative bus master interface 152. In one embodiment, data processing system 140 may also comprise an I/O bridge 154 for communicating with various I/O devices via an I/O bus 153. Such I/O devices may include but are not limited to, for example, universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART) 155, universal serial bus (USB) 156, Bluetooth wireless UART 157 and I/O expansion interface 158.

One embodiment of data processing system 140 provides for mobile, network and/or wireless communications and a processing core 159 capable of performing SIMD operations including a text string comparison operation. Processing core 159 may be programmed with various audio, video, imaging and communications algorithms including discrete transformations such as a Walsh-Hadamard transform, a fast Fourier transform (FFT), a discrete cosine transform (DCT), and their respective inverse transforms; compression/decompression techniques such as color space transformation, video encode motion estimation or video decode motion compensation; and modulation/demodulation (MODEM) functions such as pulse coded modulation (PCM).

FIG. 1C illustrates yet alternative embodiments of a data processing system capable of performing SIMD text string comparison operations. In accordance with one alternative embodiment, data processing system 160 may include a main processor 166, a SIMD coprocessor 161, a cache memory 167, and an input/output system 168. The input/output system 168 may optionally be coupled to a wireless interface 169. SIMD coprocessor 161 is capable of performing operations including instructions in accordance with one embodiment. Processing core 170 may be suitable for manufacture in one or more process technologies and by being represented on a machine readable media in sufficient detail, may be suitable to facilitate the manufacture of all or part of data processing system 160 including processing core 170.

For one embodiment, SIMD coprocessor 161 comprises an execution unit 162 and a set of register file(s) 164. One embodiment of main processor 165 comprises a decoder 165 to recognize instructions of instruction set 163 including instructions in accordance with one embodiment for execution by execution unit 162. For alternative embodiments, SIMD coprocessor 161 also comprises at least part of decoder 165B to decode instructions of instruction set 163. Processing core 170 also includes additional circuitry (not shown) which is not necessary to the understanding of embodiments of the present invention.

In operation, the main processor 166 executes a stream of data processing instructions that control data processing operations of a general type including interactions with the cache memory 167, and the input/output system 168. Embedded within the stream of data processing instructions are SIMD coprocessor instructions. The decoder 165 of main processor 166 recognizes these SIMD coprocessor instructions as being of a type that should be executed by an attached SIMD coprocessor 161. Accordingly, the main processor 166 issues these SIMD coprocessor instructions (or control signals representing SIMD coprocessor instructions) on the coprocessor bus 172 where from they are received by any attached SIMD coprocessors. In this case, the SIMD coprocessor 161 will accept and execute any received SIMD coprocessor instructions intended for it.

Data may be received via wireless interface 169 for processing by the SIMD coprocessor instructions. For one example, voice communication may be received in the form of a digital signal, which may be processed by the SIMD coprocessor instructions to regenerate digital audio samples representative of the voice communications. For another example, compressed audio and/or video may be received in the form of a digital bit stream, which may be processed by the SIMD coprocessor instructions to regenerate digital audio samples and/or motion video frames. For one embodiment of processing core 170, main processor 166, and a SIMD coprocessor 161 are integrated into a single processing core 170 comprising an execution unit 162, a set of register file(s) 164, and a decoder 165 to recognize instructions of instruction set 163 including instructions in accordance with one embodiment.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the micro-architecture for a processor 200 that includes logic circuits to perform instructions in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention. In some embodiments, an instruction in accordance with one embodiment can be implemented to operate on data elements having sizes of byte, word, doubleword, quadword, etc., as well as datatypes, such as single and double precision integer and floating point datatypes. In one embodiment the in-order front end 201 is the part of the processor 200 that fetches instructions to be executed and prepares them to be used later in the processor pipeline. The front end 201 may include several units. In one embodiment, the instruction prefetcher 226 fetches instructions from memory and feeds them to an instruction decoder 228 which in turn decodes or interprets them. For example, in one embodiment, the decoder decodes a received instruction into one or more operations called “micro-instructions” or “micro-operations” (also called micro op or uops) that the machine can execute. In other embodiments, the decoder parses the instruction into an opcode and corresponding data and control fields that are used by the micro-architecture to perform operations in accordance with one embodiment. In one embodiment, the trace cache 230 takes decoded uops and assembles them into program ordered sequences or traces in the uop queue 234 for execution. When the trace cache 230 encounters a complex instruction, the microcode ROM 232 provides the uops needed to complete the operation.

Some instructions are converted into a single micro-op, whereas others need several micro-ops to complete the full operation. In one embodiment, if more than four micro-ops are needed to complete a instruction, the decoder 228 accesses the microcode ROM 232 to do the instruction. For one embodiment, an instruction can be decoded into a small number of micro ops for processing at the instruction decoder 228. In another embodiment, an instruction can be stored within the microcode ROM 232 should a number of micro-ops be needed to accomplish the operation. The trace cache 230 refers to a entry point programmable logic array (PLA) to determine a correct micro-instruction pointer for reading the micro-code sequences to complete one or more instructions in accordance with one embodiment from the micro-code ROM 232. After the microcode ROM 232 finishes sequencing micro-ops for an instruction, the front end 201 of the machine resumes fetching micro-ops from the trace cache 230.

The out-of-order execution engine 203 is where the instructions are prepared for execution. The out-of-order execution logic has a number of buffers to smooth out and re-order the flow of instructions to optimize performance as they go down the pipeline and get scheduled for execution. The allocator logic allocates the machine buffers and resources that each uop needs in order to execute. The register renaming logic renames logic registers onto entries in a register file. The allocator also allocates an entry for each uop in one of the two uop queues, one for memory operations and one for non-memory operations, in front of the instruction schedulers: memory scheduler, fast scheduler 202, slow/general floating point scheduler 204, and simple floating point scheduler 206. The uop schedulers 202, 204, 206, determine when a uop is ready to execute based on the readiness of their dependent input register operand sources and the availability of the execution resources the uops need to complete their operation. The fast scheduler 202 of one embodiment can schedule on each half of the main clock cycle while the other schedulers can only schedule once per main processor clock cycle. The schedulers arbitrate for the dispatch ports to schedule uops for execution.

Register files 208, 210, sit between the schedulers 202, 204, 206, and the execution units 212, 214, 216, 218, 220, 222, 224 in the execution block 211. There is a separate register file 208, 210, for integer and floating point operations, respectively. Each register file 208, 210, of one embodiment also includes a bypass network that can bypass or forward just completed results that have not yet been written into the register file to new dependent uops. The integer register file 208 and the floating point register file 210 are also capable of communicating data with the other. For one embodiment, the integer register file 208 is split into two separate register files, one register file for the low order 32 bits of data and a second register file for the high order 32 bits of data. The floating point register file 210 of one embodiment has 128 bit wide entries because floating point instructions typically have operands from 64 to 128 bits in width.

The execution block 211 contains the execution units 212, 214, 216, 218, 220, 222, 224, where the instructions are actually executed. This section includes the register files 208, 210, that store the integer and floating point data operand values that the micro-instructions need to execute. The processor 200 of one embodiment is comprised of a number of execution units: address generation unit (AGU) 212, AGU 214, fast ALU 216, fast ALU 218, slow ALU 220, floating point ALU 222, floating point move unit 224. For one embodiment, the floating point execution blocks 222, 224, execute floating point, MMX, SIMD, and SSE, or other operations. The floating point ALU 222 of one embodiment includes a 64 bit by 64 bit floating point divider to execute divide, square root, and remainder micro-ops. For embodiments of the present invention, instructions involving a floating point value may be handled with the floating point hardware. In one embodiment, the ALU operations go to the high-speed ALU execution units 216, 218. The fast ALUs 216, 218, of one embodiment can execute fast operations with an effective latency of half a clock cycle. For one embodiment, most complex integer operations go to the slow ALU 220 as the slow ALU 220 includes integer execution hardware for long latency type of operations, such as a multiplier, shifts, flag logic, and branch processing. Memory load/store operations are executed by the AGUs 212, 214. For one embodiment, the integer ALUs 216, 218, 220, are described in the context of performing integer operations on 64 bit data operands. In alternative embodiments, the ALUs 216, 218, 220, can be implemented to support a variety of data bits including 16, 32, 128, 256, etc. Similarly, the floating point units 222, 224, can be implemented to support a range of operands having bits of various widths. For one embodiment, the floating point units 222, 224, can operate on 128 bits wide packed data operands in conjunction with SIMD and multimedia instructions.

In one embodiment, the uops schedulers 202, 204, 206, dispatch dependent operations before the parent load has finished executing. As uops are speculatively scheduled and executed in processor 200, the processor 200 also includes logic to handle memory misses. If a data load misses in the data cache, there can be dependent operations in flight in the pipeline that have left the scheduler with temporarily incorrect data. A replay mechanism tracks and re-executes instructions that use incorrect data. Only the dependent operations need to be replayed and the independent ones are allowed to complete. The schedulers and replay mechanism of one embodiment of a processor are also designed to catch instruction sequences for text string comparison operations.

The term “registers” may refer to the on-board processor storage locations that are used as part of instructions to identify operands. In other words, registers may be those that are usable from the outside of the processor (from a programmer's perspective). However, the registers of an embodiment should not be limited in meaning to a particular type of circuit. Rather, a register of an embodiment is capable of storing and providing data, and performing the functions described herein. The registers described herein can be implemented by circuitry within a processor using any number of different techniques, such as dedicated physical registers, dynamically allocated physical registers using register renaming, combinations of dedicated and dynamically allocated physical registers, etc. In one embodiment, integer registers store thirty-two bit integer data. A register file of one embodiment also contains eight multimedia SIMD registers for packed data. For the discussions below, the registers are understood to be data registers designed to hold packed data, such as 64 bits wide MMX™ registers (also referred to as ‘mm’ registers in some instances) in microprocessors enabled with MMX technology from Intel Corporation of Santa Clara, Calif. These MMX registers, available in both integer and floating point forms, can operate with packed data elements that accompany SIMD and SSE instructions. Similarly, 128 bits wide XMM registers relating to SSE2, SSE3, SSE4, or beyond (referred to generically as “SSEx”) technology can also be used to hold such packed data operands. In one embodiment, in storing packed data and integer data, the registers do not need to differentiate between the two data types. In one embodiment, integer and floating point are either contained in the same register file or different register files. Furthermore, in one embodiment, floating point and integer data may be stored in different registers or the same registers.

In the examples of the following figures, a number of data operands are described. FIG. 3A illustrates various packed data type representations in multimedia registers according to one embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 3A illustrates data types for a packed byte 310, a packed word 320, and a packed doubleword (dword) 330 for 128 bits wide operands. The packed byte format 310 of this example is 128 bits long and contains sixteen packed byte data elements. A byte is defined here as 8 bits of data. Information for each byte data element is stored in bit 7 through bit 0 for byte 0, bit 15 through bit 8 for byte 1, bit 23 through bit 16 for byte 2, and finally bit 120 through bit 127 for byte 15. Thus, all available bits are used in the register. This storage arrangement increases the storage efficiency of the processor. As well, with sixteen data elements accessed, one operation can now be performed on sixteen data elements in parallel.

Generally, a data element is an individual piece of data that is stored in a single register or memory location with other data elements of the same length. In packed data sequences relating to SSEx technology, the number of data elements stored in a XMM register is 128 bits divided by the length in bits of an individual data element. Similarly, in packed data sequences relating to MMX and SSE technology, the number of data elements stored in an MMX register is 64 bits divided by the length in bits of an individual data element. Although the data types illustrated in FIG. 3A are 128 bit long, embodiments of the present invention can also operate with 64 bit wide or other sized operands. The packed word format 320 of this example is 128 bits long and contains eight packed word data elements. Each packed word contains sixteen bits of information. The packed doubleword format 330 of FIG. 3A is 128 bits long and contains four packed doubleword data elements. Each packed doubleword data element contains thirty two bits of information. A packed quadword is 128 bits long and contains two packed quad-word data elements.

FIG. 3B illustrates alternative in-register data storage formats. Each packed data can include more than one independent data element. Three packed data formats are illustrated; packed half 341, packed single 342, and packed double 343. One embodiment of packed half 341, packed single 342, and packed double 343 contain fixed-point data elements. For an alternative embodiment one or more of packed half 341, packed single 342, and packed double 343 may contain floating-point data elements. One alternative embodiment of packed half 341 is one hundred twenty-eight bits long containing eight 16-bit data elements. One embodiment of packed single 342 is one hundred twenty-eight bits long and contains four 32-bit data elements. One embodiment of packed double 343 is one hundred twenty-eight bits long and contains two 64-bit data elements. It will be appreciated that such packed data formats may be further extended to other register lengths, for example, to 96-bits, 160-bits, 192-bits, 224-bits, 256-bits or more.

FIG. 3C illustrates various signed and unsigned packed data type representations in multimedia registers according to one embodiment of the present invention. Unsigned packed byte representation 344 illustrates the storage of an unsigned packed byte in a SIMD register. Information for each byte data element is stored in bit seven through bit zero for byte zero, bit fifteen through bit eight for byte one, bit twenty-three through bit sixteen for byte two, and finally bit one hundred twenty through bit one hundred twenty-seven for byte fifteen. Thus, all available bits are used in the register. This storage arrangement can increase the storage efficiency of the processor. As well, with sixteen data elements accessed, one operation can now be performed on sixteen data elements in a parallel fashion. Signed packed byte representation 345 illustrates the storage of a signed packed byte. Note that the eighth bit of every byte data element is the sign indicator. Unsigned packed word representation 346 illustrates how word seven through word zero are stored in a SIMD register. Signed packed word representation 347 is similar to the unsigned packed word in-register representation 346. Note that the sixteenth bit of each word data element is the sign indicator. Unsigned packed doubleword representation 348 shows how doubleword data elements are stored. Signed packed doubleword representation 349 is similar to unsigned packed doubleword in-register representation 348. Note that the necessary sign bit is the thirty-second bit of each doubleword data element.

FIG. 3D is a depiction of one embodiment of an operation encoding (opcode) format 360, having thirty-two or more bits, and register/memory operand addressing modes corresponding with a type of opcode format described in the “IA-32 Intel Architecture Software Developer's Manual Volume 2: Instruction Set Reference,” which is which is available from Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, Calif. on the world-wide-web (www) at intel.com/design/litcentr. In one embodiment, and instruction may be encoded by one or more of fields 361 and 362. Up to two operand locations per instruction may be identified, including up to two source operand identifiers 364 and 365. For one embodiment, destination operand identifier 366 is the same as source operand identifier 364, whereas in other embodiments they are different. For an alternative embodiment, destination operand identifier 366 is the same as source operand identifier 365, whereas in other embodiments they are different. In one embodiment, one of the source operands identified by source operand identifiers 364 and 365 is overwritten by the results of the text string comparison operations, whereas in other embodiments identifier 364 corresponds to a source register element and identifier 365 corresponds to a destination register element. For one embodiment, operand identifiers 364 and 365 may be used to identify 32-bit or 64-bit source and destination operands.

FIG. 3E is a depiction of another alternative operation encoding (opcode) format 370, having forty or more bits. Opcode format 370 corresponds with opcode format 360 and comprises an optional prefix byte 378. An instruction according to one embodiment may be encoded by one or more of fields 378, 371, and 372. Up to two operand locations per instruction may be identified by source operand identifiers 374 and 375 and by prefix byte 378. For one embodiment, prefix byte 378 may be used to identify 32-bit or 64-bit source and destination operands. For one embodiment, destination operand identifier 376 is the same as source operand identifier 374, whereas in other embodiments they are different. For an alternative embodiment, destination operand identifier 376 is the same as source operand identifier 375, whereas in other embodiments they are different. In one embodiment, an instruction operates on one or more of the operands identified by operand identifiers 374 and 375 and one or more operands identified by the operand identifiers 374 and 375 is overwritten by the results of the instruction, whereas in other embodiments, operands identified by identifiers 374 and 375 are written to another data element in another register. Opcode formats 360 and 370 allow register to register, memory to register, register by memory, register by register, register by immediate, register to memory addressing specified in part by MOD fields 363 and 373 and by optional scale-index-base and displacement bytes.

Turning next to FIG. 3F, in some alternative embodiments, 64 bit single instruction multiple data (SIMD) arithmetic operations may be performed through a coprocessor data processing (CDP) instruction. Operation encoding (opcode) format 380 depicts one such CDP instruction having CDP opcode fields 382 and 389. The type of CDP instruction, for alternative embodiments, operations may be encoded by one or more of fields 383, 384, 387, and 388. Up to three operand locations per instruction may be identified, including up to two source operand identifiers 385 and 390 and one destination operand identifier 386. One embodiment of the coprocessor can operate on 8, 16, 32, and 64 bit values. For one embodiment, an instruction is performed on integer data elements. In some embodiments, an instruction may be executed conditionally, using condition field 381. For some embodiments, source data sizes may be encoded by field 383. In some embodiments, Zero (Z), negative (N), carry (C), and overflow (V) detection can be done on SIMD fields. For some instructions, the type of saturation may be encoded by field 384.

FIG. 4A is a block diagram illustrating an in-order pipeline and a register renaming stage, out-of-order issue/execution pipeline according to at least one embodiment of the invention. FIG. 4B is a block diagram illustrating an in-order architecture core and a register renaming logic, out-of-order issue/execution logic to be included in a processor according to at least one embodiment of the invention. The solid lined boxes in FIG. 4A illustrate the in-order pipeline, while the dashed lined boxes illustrates the register renaming, out-of-order issue/execution pipeline. Similarly, the solid lined boxes in FIG. 4B illustrate the in-order architecture logic, while the dashed lined boxes illustrates the register renaming logic and out-of-order issue/execution logic.

In FIG. 4A, a processor pipeline 400 includes a fetch stage 402, a length decode stage 404, a decode stage 406, an allocation stage 408, a renaming stage 410, a scheduling (also known as a dispatch or issue) stage 412, a register read/memory read stage 414, an execute stage 416, a write back/memory write stage 418, an exception handling stage 422, and a commit stage 424.

In FIG. 4B, arrows denote a coupling between two or more units and the direction of the arrow indicates a direction of data flow between those units. FIG. 4B shows processor core 490 including a front end unit 430 coupled to an execution engine unit 450, and both are coupled to a memory unit 470.

The core 490 may be a reduced instruction set computing (RISC) core, a complex instruction set computing (CISC) core, a very long instruction word (VLIW) core, or a hybrid or alternative core type. As yet another option, the core 490 may be a special-purpose core, such as, for example, a network or communication core, compression engine, graphics core, or the like.

The front end unit 430 includes a branch prediction unit 432 coupled to an instruction cache unit 434, which is coupled to an instruction translation lookaside buffer (TLB) 436, which is coupled to an instruction fetch unit 438, which is coupled to a decode unit 440. The decode unit or decoder may decode instructions, and generate as an output one or more micro-operations, micro-code entry points, microinstructions, other instructions, or other control signals, which are decoded from, or which otherwise reflect, or are derived from, the original instructions. The decoder may be implemented using various different mechanisms. Examples of suitable mechanisms include, but are not limited to, look-up tables, hardware implementations, programmable logic arrays (PLAs), microcode read only memories (ROMs), etc. The instruction cache unit 434 is further coupled to a level 2 (L2) cache unit 476 in the memory unit 470. The decode unit 440 is coupled to a rename/allocator unit 452 in the execution engine unit 450.

The execution engine unit 450 includes the rename/allocator unit 452-coupled to a retirement unit 454 and a set of one or more scheduler unit(s) 456. The re-order buffer (not shown) may be a part of the retirement unit 454. The scheduler unit(s) 456 represents any number of different schedulers, including reservations stations, central instruction window, etc. The scheduler unit(s) 456 is coupled to the physical register file(s) unit(s) 458. Each of the physical register file(s) units 458 represents one or more physical register files, different ones of which store one or more different data types, such as scalar integer, scalar floating point, packed integer, packed floating point, vector integer, vector floating point, etc., status (e.g., an instruction pointer that is the address of the next instruction to be executed), etc. The physical register file(s) unit(s) 458 is overlapped by the retirement unit 154 to illustrate various ways in which register renaming and out-of-order execution may be implemented (e.g., using a reorder buffer(s) and a retirement register file(s), using a future file(s), a history buffer(s), and a retirement register file(s); using a register maps and a pool of registers; etc.). Generally, the architectural registers are visible from the outside of the processor or from a programmer's perspective. The registers are not limited to any known particular type of circuit. Various different types of registers are suitable as long as they are capable of storing and providing data as described herein. Examples of suitable registers include, but are not limited to, dedicated physical registers, dynamically allocated physical registers using register renaming, combinations of dedicated and dynamically allocated physical registers, etc. The retirement unit 454 and the physical register file(s) unit(s) 458 are coupled to the execution cluster(s) 460. The execution cluster(s) 460 includes a set of one or more execution units 162 and a set of one or more memory access units 464. The execution units 462 may perform various operations (e.g., shifts, addition, subtraction, multiplication) and on various types of data (e.g., scalar floating point, packed integer, packed floating point, vector integer, vector floating point). While some embodiments may include a number of execution units dedicated to specific functions or sets of functions, other embodiments may include only one execution unit or multiple execution units that all perform all functions. The scheduler unit(s) 456, physical register file(s) unit(s) 458, and execution cluster(s) 460 are shown as being possibly plural because certain embodiments create separate pipelines for certain types of data/operations (e.g., a scalar integer pipeline, a scalar floating point/packed integer/packed floating point/vector integer/vector floating point pipeline, and/or a memory access pipeline that each have their own scheduler unit, physical register file(s) unit, and/or execution cluster—and in the case of a separate memory access pipeline, certain embodiments are implemented in which only the execution cluster of this pipeline has the memory access unit(s) 464). It should also be understood that where separate pipelines are used, one or more of these pipelines may be out-of-order issue/execution and the rest in-order.

The set of memory access units 464 is coupled to the memory unit 470, which includes a data TLB unit 472 coupled to a data cache unit 474 coupled to a level 2 (L2) cache unit 476. In one exemplary embodiment, the memory access units 464 may include a load unit, a store address unit, and a store data unit, each of which is coupled to the data TLB unit 472 in the memory unit 470. The L2 cache unit 476 is coupled to one or more other levels of cache and eventually to a main memory.

By way of example, the exemplary register renaming, out-of-order issue/execution core architecture may implement the pipeline 400 as follows: 1) the instruction fetch 438 performs the fetch and length decoding stages 402 and 404; 2) the decode unit 440 performs the decode stage 406; 3) the rename/allocator unit 452 performs the allocation stage 408 and renaming stage 410; 4) the scheduler unit(s) 456 performs the schedule stage 412; 5) the physical register file(s) unit(s) 458 and the memory unit 470 perform the register read/memory read stage 414; the execution cluster 460 perform the execute stage 416; 6) the memory unit 470 and the physical register file(s) unit(s) 458 perform the write back/memory write stage 418; 7) various units may be involved in the exception handling stage 422; and 8) the retirement unit 454 and the physical register file(s) unit(s) 458 perform the commit stage 424.

The core 490 may support one or more instructions sets (e.g., the x86 instruction set (with some extensions that have been added with newer versions); the MIPS instruction set of MIPS Technologies of Sunnyvale, Calif.; the ARM instruction set (with optional additional extensions such as NEON) of ARM Holdings of Sunnyvale, Calif.).

It should be understood that the core may support multithreading (executing two or more parallel sets of operations or threads), and may do so in a variety of ways including time sliced multithreading, simultaneous multithreading (where a single physical core provides a logical core for each of the threads that physical core is simultaneously multithreading), or a combination thereof (e.g., time sliced fetching and decoding and simultaneous multithreading thereafter such as in the Intel® Hyperthreading technology).

While register renaming is described in the context of out-of-order execution, it should be understood that register renaming may be used in an in-order architecture. While the illustrated embodiment of the processor also includes a separate instruction and data cache units 434/474 and a shared L2 cache unit 476, alternative embodiments may have a single internal cache for both instructions and data, such as, for example, a Level 1 (L1) internal cache, or multiple levels of internal cache. In some embodiments, the system may include a combination of an internal cache and an external cache that is external to the core and/or the processor. Alternatively, all of the cache may be external to the core and/or the processor.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of a single core processor and a multicore processor 500 with integrated memory controller and graphics according to embodiments of the invention. The solid lined boxes in FIG. 5 illustrate a processor 500 with a single core 502A, a system agent 510, a set of one or more bus controller units 516, while the optional addition of the dashed lined boxes illustrates an alternative processor 500 with multiple cores 502A-N, a set of one or more integrated memory controller unit(s) 514 in the system agent unit 510, and an integrated graphics logic 508.

The memory hierarchy includes one or more levels of cache within the cores, a set or one or more shared cache units 506, and external memory (not shown) coupled to the set of integrated memory controller units 514. The set of shared cache units 506 may include one or more mid-level caches, such as level 2 (L2), level 3 (L3), level 4 (L4), or other levels of cache, a last level cache (LLC), and/or combinations thereof. While in one embodiment a ring based interconnect unit 512 interconnects the integrated graphics logic 508, the set of shared cache units 506, and the system agent unit 510, alternative embodiments may use any number of well-known techniques for interconnecting such units.

In some embodiments, one or more of the cores 502A-N are capable of multi-threading. The system agent 510 includes those components coordinating and operating cores 502A-N. The system agent unit 510 may include for example a power control unit (PCU) and a display unit. The PCU may be or include logic and components needed for regulating the power state of the cores 502A-N and the integrated graphics logic 508. The display unit is for driving one or more externally connected displays.

The cores 502A-N may be homogenous or heterogeneous in terms of architecture and/or instruction set. For example, some of the cores 502A-N may be in order while others are out-of-order. As another example, two or more of the cores 502A-N may be capable of execution the same instruction set, while others may be capable of executing only a subset of that instruction set or a different instruction set.

The processor may be a general-purpose processor, such as a Core™ i3, i5, i7, 2 Duo and Quad, Xeon™, Itanium™, XScale™ or StrongARM™ processor, which are available from Intel Corporation, of Santa Clara, Calif. Alternatively, the processor may be from another company, such as ARM Holdings, Ltd, MIPS, etc. The processor may be a special-purpose processor, such as, for example, a network or communication processor, compression engine, graphics processor, co-processor, embedded processor, or the like. The processor may be implemented on one or more chips. The processor 500 may be a part of and/or may be implemented on one or more substrates using any of a number of process technologies, such as, for example, BiCMOS, CMOS, or NMOS.

FIGS. 6-8 are exemplary systems suitable for including the processor 500, while FIG. 9 is an exemplary system on a chip (SoC) that may include one or more of the cores 502. Other system designs and configurations known in the arts for laptops, desktops, handheld PCs, personal digital assistants, engineering workstations, servers, network devices, network hubs, switches, embedded processors, digital signal processors (DSPs), graphics devices, video game devices, set-top boxes, micro controllers, cell phones, portable media players, hand held devices, and various other electronic devices, are also suitable. In general, a huge variety of systems or electronic devices capable of incorporating a processor and/or other execution logic as disclosed herein are generally suitable.

Referring now to FIG. 6, shown is a block diagram of a system 600 in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention. The system 600 may include one or more processors 610, 615, which are coupled to graphics memory controller hub (GMCH) 620. The optional nature of additional processors 615 is denoted in FIG. 6 with broken lines.

Each processor 610, 615 may be some version of the processor 500. However, it should be noted that it is unlikely that integrated graphics logic and integrated memory control units would exist in the processors 610,615. FIG. 6 illustrates that the GMCH 620 may be coupled to a memory 640 that may be, for example, a dynamic random access memory (DRAM). The DRAM may, for at least one embodiment, be associated with a non-volatile cache.

The GMCH 620 may be a chipset, or a portion of a chipset. The GMCH 620 may communicate with the processor(s) 610, 615 and control interaction between the processor(s) 610, 615 and memory 640. The GMCH 620 may also act as an accelerated bus interface between the processor(s) 610, 615 and other elements of the system 600. For at least one embodiment, the GMCH 620 communicates with the processor(s) 610, 615 via a multi-drop bus, such as a frontside bus (FSB) 695.

Furthermore, GMCH 620 is coupled to a display 645 (such as a flat panel display). GMCH 620 may include an integrated graphics accelerator. GMCH 620 is further coupled to an input/output (I/O) controller hub (ICH) 650, which may be used to couple various peripheral devices to system 600. Shown for example in the embodiment of FIG. 6 is an external graphics device 660, which may be a discrete graphics device coupled to ICH 650, along with another peripheral device 670.

Alternatively, additional or different processors may also be present in the system 600. For example, additional processor(s) 615 may include additional processors(s) that are the same as processor 610, additional processor(s) that are heterogeneous or asymmetric to processor 610, accelerators (such as, e.g., graphics accelerators or digital signal processing (DSP) units), field programmable gate arrays, or any other processor. There can be a variety of differences between the physical resources 610, 615 in terms of a spectrum of metrics of merit including architectural, micro-architectural, thermal, power consumption characteristics, and the like. These differences may effectively manifest themselves as asymmetry and heterogeneity amongst the processors 610, 615. For at least one embodiment, the various processors 610, 615 may reside in the same die package.

Referring now to FIG. 7, shown is a block diagram of a second system 700 in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 7, multiprocessor system 700 is a point-to-point interconnect system, and includes a first processor 770 and a second processor 780 coupled via a point-to-point interconnect 750. Each of processors 770 and 780 may be some version of the processor 500 as one or more of the processors 610,615.

While shown with only two processors 770, 780, it is to be understood that the scope of the present invention is not so limited. In other embodiments, one or more additional processors may be present in a given processor.

Processors 770 and 780 are shown including integrated memory controller units 772 and 782, respectively. Processor 770 also includes as part of its bus controller units point-to-point (P-P) interfaces 776 and 778; similarly, second processor 780 includes P-P interfaces 786 and 788. Processors 770, 780 may exchange information via a point-to-point (P-P) interface 750 using P-P interface circuits 778, 788. As shown in FIG. 7, IMCs 772 and 782 couple the processors to respective memories, namely a memory 732 and a memory 734, which may be portions of main memory locally attached to the respective processors.

Processors 770, 780 may each exchange information with a chipset 790 via individual P-P interfaces 752, 754 using point to point interface circuits 776, 794, 786, 798. Chipset 790 may also exchange information with a high-performance graphics circuit 738 via a high-performance graphics interface 739.

A shared cache (not shown) may be included in either processor or outside of both processors, yet connected with the processors via P-P interconnect, such that either or both processors' local cache information may be stored in the shared cache if a processor is placed into a low power mode.

Chipset 790 may be coupled to a first bus 716 via an interface 796. In one embodiment, first bus 716 may be a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus, or a bus such as a PCI Express bus or another third generation I/O interconnect bus, although the scope of the present invention is not so limited.

As shown in FIG. 7, various I/O devices 714 may be coupled to first bus 716, along with a bus bridge 718 which couples first bus 716 to a second bus 720. In one embodiment, second bus 720 may be a low pin count (LPC) bus. Various devices may be coupled to second bus 720 including, for example, a keyboard and/or mouse 722, communication devices 727 and a storage unit 728 such as a disk drive or other mass storage device which may include instructions/code and data 730, in one embodiment. Further, an audio I/O 724 may be coupled to second bus 720. Note that other architectures are possible. For example, instead of the point-to-point architecture of FIG. 7, a system may implement a multi-drop bus or other such architecture.

Referring now to FIG. 8, shown is a block diagram of a third system 800 in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. Like elements in FIGS. 7 and 8 bear like reference numerals, and certain aspects of FIG. 7 have been omitted from FIG. 8 in order to avoid obscuring other aspects of FIG. 8.

FIG. 8 illustrates that the processors 870, 880 may include integrated memory and I/O control logic (“CL”) 872 and 882, respectively. For at least one embodiment, the CL 872, 882 may include integrated memory controller units such as that described above in connection with FIGS. 5 and 7. In addition. CL 872, 882 may also include I/O control logic. FIG. 8 illustrates that not only are the memories 832, 834 coupled to the CL 872, 882, but also that I/O devices 814 are also coupled to the control logic 872, 882. Legacy I/O devices 815 are coupled to the chipset 890.

Referring now to FIG. 9, shown is a block diagram of a SoC 900 in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. Similar elements in FIG. 5 bear like reference numerals. Also, dashed lined boxes are optional features on more advanced SoCs. In FIG. 9, an interconnect unit(s) 902 is coupled to: an application processor 910 which includes a set of one or more cores 902A-N and shared cache unit(s) 906; a system agent unit 910; a bus controller unit(s) 916; an integrated memory controller unit(s) 914; a set or one or more media processors 920 which may include integrated graphics logic 908, an image processor 924 for providing still and/or video camera functionality, an audio processor 926 for providing hardware audio acceleration, and a video processor 928 for providing video encode/decode acceleration; an static random access memory (SRAM) unit 930; a direct memory access (DMA) unit 932; and a display unit 940 for coupling to one or more external displays.

FIG. 10 illustrates a processor containing a central processing unit (CPU) and a graphics processing unit (GPU), which may perform at least one instruction according to one embodiment. In one embodiment, an instruction to perform operations according to at least one embodiment could be performed by the CPU. In another embodiment, the instruction could be performed by the GPU. In still another embodiment, the instruction may be performed through a combination of operations performed by the GPU and the CPU. For example, in one embodiment, an instruction in accordance with one embodiment may be received and decoded for execution on the GPU. However, one or more operations within the decoded instruction may be performed by a CPU and the result returned to the GPU for final retirement of the instruction. Conversely, in some embodiments, the CPU may act as the primary processor and the GPU as the co-processor.

In some embodiments, instructions that benefit from highly parallel, throughput processors may be performed by the GPU, while instructions that benefit from the performance of processors that benefit from deeply pipelined architectures may be performed by the CPU. For example, graphics, scientific applications, financial applications and other parallel workloads may benefit from the performance of the GPU and be executed accordingly, whereas more sequential applications, such as operating system kernel or application code may be better suited for the CPU.

In FIG. 10, processor 1000 includes a CPU 1005, GPU 1010, image processor 1015, video processor 1020, USB controller 1025, UART controller 1030, SPI/SDIO controller 1035, display device 1040, memory interface controller 1045, MIPI controller 1050, flash memory controller 1055, dual data rate (DDR) controller 1060, security engine 1065, and I²S/I²C controller 1070. Other logic and circuits may be included in the processor of FIG. 10, including more CPUs or GPUs and other peripheral interface controllers.

One or more aspects of at least one embodiment may be implemented by representative data stored on a machine-readable medium which represents various logic within the processor, which when read by a machine causes the machine to fabricate logic to perform the techniques described herein. Such representations, known as “IP cores” may be stored on a tangible, machine readable medium (“tape”) and supplied to various customers or manufacturing facilities to load into the fabrication machines that actually make the logic or processor. For example, IP cores, such as the Cortex™ family of processors developed by ARM Holdings, Ltd. and Loongson IP cores developed the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences may be licensed or sold to various customers or licensees, such as Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Apple, or Samsung and implemented in processors produced by these customers or licensees.

FIG. 11 shows a block diagram illustrating the development of IP cores according to one embodiment. Storage 1130 includes simulation software 1120 and/or hardware or software model 1110. In one embodiment, the data representing the IP core design can be provided to the storage 1130 via memory 1140 (e.g., hard disk), wired connection (e.g., internet) 1150 or wireless connection 1160. The IP core information generated by the simulation tool and model can then be transmitted to a fabrication facility where it can be fabricated by a 3^(rd) party to perform at least one instruction in accordance with at least one embodiment.

In some embodiments, one or more instructions may correspond to a first type or architecture (e.g., x86) and be translated or emulated on a processor of a different type or architecture (e.g., ARM). An instruction, according to one embodiment, may therefore be performed on any processor or processor type, including ARM, x86, MIPS, a GPU, or other processor type or architecture.

FIG. 12 illustrates how an instruction of a first type is emulated by a processor of a different type, according to one embodiment. In FIG. 12, program 1205 contains some instructions that may perform the same or substantially the same function as an instruction according to one embodiment. However the instructions of program 1205 may be of a type and/or format that is different or incompatible with processor 1215, meaning the instructions of the type in program 1205 may not be executed natively by the processor 1215. However, with the help of emulation logic, 1210, the instructions of program 1205 are translated into instructions that are natively capable of being executed by the processor 1215. In one embodiment, the emulation logic is embodied in hardware. In another embodiment, the emulation logic is embodied in a tangible, machine-readable medium containing software to translate instructions of the type in the program 1205 into the type natively executable by the processor 1215. In other embodiments, emulation logic is a combination of fixed-function or programmable hardware and a program stored on a tangible, machine-readable medium. In one embodiment, the processor contains the emulation logic, whereas in other embodiments, the emulation logic exists outside of the processor and is provided by a third party. In one embodiment, the processor is capable of loading the emulation logic embodied in a tangible, machine-readable medium containing software by executing microcode or firmware contained in or associated with the processor.

FIG. 13 is a block diagram contrasting the use of a software instruction converter to convert binary instructions in a source instruction set to binary instructions in a target instruction set according to embodiments of the invention. In the illustrated embodiment, the instruction converter is a software instruction converter, although alternatively the instruction converter may be implemented in software, firmware, hardware, or various combinations thereof. FIG. 13 shows a program in a high level language 1302 may be compiled using an x86 compiler 1304 to generate x86 binary code 1306 that may be natively executed by a processor with at least one x86 instruction set core 1316. The processor with at least one x86 instruction set core 1316 represents any processor that can perform substantially the same functions as a Intel processor with at least one x86 instruction set core by compatibly executing or otherwise processing (1) a substantial portion of the instruction set of the Intel x86 instruction set core or (2) object code versions of applications or other software targeted to run on an Intel processor with at least one x86 instruction set core, in order to achieve substantially the same result as an Intel processor with at least one x86 instruction set core. The x86 compiler 1304 represents a compiler that is operable to generate x86 binary code 1306 (e.g., object code) that can, with or without additional linkage processing, be executed on the processor with at least one x86 instruction set core 1316. Similarly, FIG. 13 shows the program in the high level language 1302 may be compiled using an alternative instruction set compiler 1308 to generate alternative instruction set binary code 1310 that may be natively executed by a processor without at least one x86 instruction set core 1314 (e.g., a processor with cores that execute the MIPS instruction set of MIPS Technologies of Sunnyvale, Calif. and/or that execute the ARM instruction set of ARM Holdings of Sunnyvale, Calif.). The instruction converter 1312 is used to convert the x86 binary code 1306 into code that may be natively executed by the processor without an x86 instruction set core 1314. This converted code is not likely to be the same as the alternative instruction set binary code 1310 because an instruction converter capable of this is difficult to make; however, the converted code will accomplish the general operation and be made up of instructions from the alternative instruction set. Thus, the instruction converter 1312 represents software, firmware, hardware, or a combination thereof that, through emulation, simulation or any other process, allows a processor or other electronic device that does not have an x86 instruction set processor or core to execute the x86 binary code 1306.

Embodiments may be discussed herein to efficiently manage re-order buffers. In an embodiment, a checkpoint of a current state of a thread may be created. One or more incomplete instructions may be moved from a first level of a re-order buffer to a second level of the re-order buffer. Each incomplete instruction may be currently executing or awaiting execution.

In an embodiment, in response to detecting a checkpoint condition, a second checkpoint of a second state of the thread may be saved. In an embodiment, each instruction may be a micro-operation. In an embodiment, in response to detecting a branch misprediction, an exception, a trap, an interrupt, or an event associated with an incomplete instruction tracked by the second level, the thread may be restored to the created checkpoint. In an embodiment, in response to detecting one or more stop conditions are met, incomplete instructions may be retained in the first level. In an embodiment, the created checkpoint may include saving a current state of an instruction pointer and a current state of performance monitoring counters. In an embodiment, the one or more conditions may include whether an instruction from the first level is in an incomplete state for a predetermined period of time. In an embodiment, the one or more conditions may include whether the first level includes a predetermined number of instructions. In an embodiment, the second level may be indexed directly or indexed via content addressable memory. In an embodiment, one or more entries of the re-order buffer may track two instructions.

Although the below embodiments discuss methods and structures at an instruction level, the same principles can be applied at a micro-operation (uop) level. Namely, in certain embodiments, each entry of a ROB may track one or more uops and may process the one or more uops as described below with reference to instructions.

FIG. 14 illustrates a ROB 1410 to track uncommitted (unretired) instructions according to an embodiment. When an instruction commits (also known as retires), all of the effect of that instruction are guaranteed to occur or to have occurred in compliance with the instruction set architecture rules—the CPU no longer has the ability to undo that instruction. Thus, the ROB 1410 tracks all instructions that are in the process of executing or have completed execution but can still be undone. Each entry in the ROB 1410 may hold information about one or more uncommitted instructions. The ROB 1410 may track each instruction's allocation, execution, and retirement. In an embodiment, the ROB 1410 may also track performance information and faults associated with each instruction.

A program may dictate a particular order in which instructions are to be executed, but in some embodiments, the micro-architecture may execute the instructions out of order to increase performance while preserving the program order appearance. Specifically, instruction opcodes may be written (allocated) into the ROB 1410 in program order following predicted branch direction with their executed and fault indications clear. An out-of-order execution engine may execute them in non-program order, writing back the executed and fault information when the instruction execution is complete. However, to avoid committing younger results (i.e., results from subsequent instructions) before older results (i.e., results from previous instructions) according to program order, the ROB 1410 may be utilized to ensure that instructions are committed (retired) in order. Therefore, any instruction which is in flight (uncommitted) may be tracked by the ROB 1410.

If an exception is detected by the ROB 1410 on a particular instruction, the ROB may discard the instruction (or it may commit the instruction, depending on the nature of the exception) and may discard all younger instructions (according to program order), whether they have completed execution or not, and the instruction pointer 1414 may be redirected to the starting address of the exception handler. Similarly, if a branch misprediction is detected on a particular instruction, the ROB 1410 will discard all younger instructions, whether they have completed execution or not, the branch may be committed, and the instruction pointer 1414 may be redirected to the correct target of the branch. Mechanisms for handling exceptions, faults, traps, interrupts, and mispredictions associated with uncommitted instructions tracked by the ROB 1410 are known in the art.

When an instruction is retired (committed), that instruction is removed from the ROB 1410 and the instruction pointer (IP) 1414 may be incremented. The instruction pointer 1414 points to the instruction (in program order) after the last retired instruction. Additionally, performance monitoring (PerfMon) counters 1412 may be updated. PerfMon counters 1412 may collect performance metrics such as metrics about retired instructions.

The size of the ROB 1410 influences the performance of the system because it affects the size of the pool of uncommitted instructions from which instructions may be selected to execute in parallel. Thus, a larger ROB may increase the performance of the system by allowing the out-of-order execution engine to identify and execute younger but independent instructions earlier, such that when instructions become the oldest instructions in the ROB, the likelihood that their execution has already completed has increased and their results committed sooner. In certain systems, a large ROB may be required to support certain system features. For example, conventional ROBs typically store between 64 and 256 instructions. However, memory latency tolerance, a feature which allows for execution of multiple instructions when waiting for long load times, may require ROBs capable of storing hundreds or even thousands of entries. In other words, finding a sufficient number of uncommitted but independent instructions to keep the execution units busy while waiting for older loads to complete may require looking ahead thousands of instructions along the predicted program path. On the other hand, building larger ROBs utilizing existing designs has many drawbacks. Namely, increasing the number of ROB entries utilizing existing designs may severely impact circuit timing, area, and power usage. For example, substantially increasing the size of the ROB array requires that read and write wires inside the array be longer to reach the more distant entries, which increases the net capacitance of the wires, leading to additional power burn when charging and discharging the wires. Similarly, the longer wires lead to additional signal transit latency along the longer wires which make reads and writes take a greater portion of the clock cycle.

FIG. 15 illustrates a two level ROB to track uncommitted instructions according to an embodiment. In an embodiment, via a two level ROB 1500, the effective capacity of the ROB may be increased while minimizing the drawbacks discussed above resulting from simply increasing the size of the ROB array. At a high level, the first level ROB 1510 is extended with a second mode. In the first mode, ROB 1510 operates like the traditional ROB 1410 described above. It operates on uncommitted instructions, tracking allocation, execution, and commit. However, in the presence of incomplete operations that delay retirement, and thus delay the allocation and execution of younger instructions because the ROB is full, the first level ROB 1510 has the option to enter a second mode that defers incomplete instructions to a second level ROB 1520. When ROB 1510 transitions from the first (architectural) mode to the second (speculative) mode, the architectural state is saved into a checkpoint. In the second mode, ROB 1510 no longer stores architectural state but instead stores speculative state. Instructions are removed in program order from the first level ROB 1510: (1) incomplete instructions are moved in program order into the second level ROB 1520; (2) complete instructions update speculative state in program order and are removed from first level ROB 1510. Thus the speculative program state may contain some ‘gaps’ where completed instructions have updated the state while incomplete instructions in ROB 1520 have not yet updated state. Later, once the deferred incomplete instructions present in the second level ROB 1520 complete, their results also update speculative state (in other words, the gaps are filled). Finally, when all instructions that were present in the second level ROB 1520 have updated speculative state without incident, all of the pseudo-retired instructions become logically committed and the first level ROB 1510 may transition from the second (speculative) mode back to the first (architectural) mode. This process allows first level ROB 1510 to reach deeper into the program looking for independent instructions to execute in parallel when ROB 1400 might ordinarily be clogged by many completed instructions that are blocked from retiring due to the oldest instruction being incomplete.

The first level ROB 1510 may be structured and may operate in a first (architectural) mode that is similar to ROB 1410 discussed above. That is, the entries of the first level ROB 1510 may track uncommitted instructions. Mechanisms for handling exceptions and mechanisms for handling branch mispredictions associated with uncommitted instructions tracked by ROB 1510 are known in the art. Some of the entries in ROB 1510 may include information about instructions which have been allocated and fully executed but not yet committed (completed but not retired instructions) and other entries may include information about instructions which have been allocated but not yet fully executed (incomplete instructions). The first level ROB 1510 may operate in a second (speculative) mode that requires a minimal set of changes to ROB 1410 discussed above. In an embodiment, one or more conditions may trigger a new mechanism called “pseudo-retiring” of a contiguous set of both the complete instructions and incomplete instructions from the first level ROB 1510 in program order starting with the oldest. Pseudo-retiring an instruction does not actually retire the instruction (that is, the result and the IP are not permanently committed to architectural state) but it updates speculative state and frees up the first level ROB entries corresponding to the pseudo-retired instructions so that additional instructions may be tracked by the first level ROB 1510 as discussed in detail below.

An incomplete instruction may be pseudo-retired by moving information about the instruction from the first level ROB 1510 into the second level ROB 1520. Typically the ratio of incomplete instructions to complete instructions within the pseudo-retire region is small and therefore, the size of the second level ROB 1520 may contain fewer entries than the first level ROB 1510. In an embodiment, the amount of data that is tracked for a single second-level ROB 1520 entry may be less than a first-level ROB 1510 entry and therefore the second-level ROB 1520 entry may contain fewer bits than the ROB 1510 entry. In an embodiment, when the incomplete instruction is pseudo-retired, the instruction pointer 1514 may be updated as if it had been retired. In an embodiment, when the incomplete instruction is pseudo-retired, updates to the PerfMon counters 1512 may be deferred until the instructions retire from the second level ROB 1520. In another embodiment, when the incomplete instruction is pseudo-retired, the PerfMon counters associated with execution events may be updated (such as a BRANCH operation retired), while the PerfMon counters associated with execution outcomes may be deferred until retirement from the second level ROB 1520 (such as a BRANCH operation retired with a TAKEN branch direction).

A complete instruction may be pseudo-retired by removing information about the complete instruction from the first level ROB 1510, but it may not be moved to the second level ROB 1520. In an embodiment, when the complete instruction is pseudo-retired, the PerfMon counters 1512 and the instruction pointer 1514 may be updated into speculative state as explained above with reference to FIG. 14.

Different approaches may be utilized to index the second level ROB 1520. Note that the deferred incomplete instructions do not necessarily comprise a contiguous block of instructions in program order. Completed instructions located in between incomplete instructions may have been pseudo-retired and may not be needed inside the second level ROB. In an embodiment, the second level ROB 1520 may be indexed via content addressable memory (CAM) entries on ROB ID. That is, when an instruction writes back data for an instruction located in the second level ROB 1520, the ROB ID is obtained from the execution HW and matched against the ROB ID stored in each second level ROB entry. In other words, the second level ROB 1520 is searched for the appropriate ROB ID. In another embodiment, for each instruction moved over from the first level ROB 1510 to the second level ROB 1520, all of the bits of each corresponding entry in the first level ROB 1510 are moved into an entry in the second level ROB 1520 and the second level ROB 1520 entries are indexed directly. Because of the direct ROB ID mapping into the second level ROB 1520, empty entries may exist in the structure for those instructions completed prior to pseudo-retirement. The second approach may be more favorable in designs where the second level ROB 1520 only stores the “execution complete” bits while the first approach may be more favorable in designs where the second level ROB 1520 stores several bits in addition to the execution complete bits. The decision to pick one indexing approach over another may depend upon the number of bits that need to be supported by the second level ROB 1520 and the number of entries that need to be stored in the second level ROB 1520.

When pseudo-retirement is triggered, structures in the processors/cores that send data to the first level ROB 1510, such as execution units, may check to verify whether the corresponding entry (or entries) from the first level ROB 1510 is still present since there is a possibility that the entry has been pseudo-retired and moved to the second level ROB 1520. If the entry is present in the first level ROB 1510, it is updated directly. If not, it is handled by the second level ROB 1520.

In an embodiment, pseudo-retirement may be triggered if one or more instructions tracked by the first level ROB 1510 are in an incomplete status or predicted to be in an incomplete status for a period of time over a particular threshold. In an embodiment, pseudo-retirement may be triggered if the ROB 1510 is approaching full capacity or is at full capacity. Specifically, pseudo-retirement may be triggered if a particular number or percentage of entries in the ROB 1510 are tracking uncommitted instructions. In an embodiment, pseudo-retirement may be triggered if the ROB 1510 contains below a certain percentage of incomplete instructions. In an embodiment, pseudo-retirement may be trigged if the oldest instruction in the ROB 1510 is an incomplete instruction. In an embodiment, pseudo-retirement may be trigged if the oldest instruction in the ROB 1510 is an incomplete instruction and has been the oldest instruction for a predetermined number of cycles. In an embodiment, pseudo-retirement may be trigged if the oldest instruction in the ROB 1510 is an incomplete instruction and is member of a predetermined set of instruction types.

In an embodiment, at the point when pseudo-retirement is triggered, a checkpoint which saves the precise state of the machine (or thread) may be created to handle future problems that may require recovery associated with instructions tracked by the second level ROB 1520. Namely, the checkpoint is created prior to the first instruction that is pseudo-retired. The checkpoint enables a simplified second level ROB 1520 compared to first level ROB 1510. The simplification is that the first level ROB 1510 needs to store sufficient information to recover from problems at fine granularities (instruction or micro-operation boundaries) while the second level ROB 1520 with a checkpoint only needs the ability to recover from problems at coarse granularities (many instructions or micro-operations covered by a single older checkpoint). The checkpoint may be created by copying the value(s) of the PerfMon counters 1512 to another set of PerfMon counters 1522 (checkpointed PerfMon counters) and by copying the value of the instruction pointer to a checkpointed instruction pointer 1524. If an exception or branch misprediction occurs associated with an uncommitted instruction in the second level ROB 1520, the value of the instruction pointer 1514 is restored to the value of the checkpointed instruction pointer 1524. Likewise, if an exception or branch misprediction occurs associated with an uncommitted instruction in the second level ROB 1520, the value(s) of the PerfMon counters 1512 may be restored to the value(s) of the checkpointed PerfMon counters 1522 so that the performance statistics are accurately maintained. Note that in certain circumstances, the program point of the exception or branch misprediction might be younger than that of the checkpoint. After restoration to the checkpointed values, a number of instructions may have to be allocated, executed, and retired before reaching the point of the exception or branch misprediction. Therefore, exceptions or branch mispredictions may not be resolved when they are in second level ROB 1520. Instead, exceptions and branch mispredictions may be resolved from first level ROB 1510.

In an embodiment, the pseudo-retirement mechanism may continue to operate until one or more stop conditions are met. In an embodiment, when an instruction that cannot be executed speculatively becomes the oldest instruction in the first level ROB 1510, the pseudo-retirement mechanism may stop. For example, when an I/O instruction becomes the oldest instruction in first level ROB 1510, it may cause the pseudo-retirement mechanism to be stopped. In an embodiment, when an instruction completes while in first level ROB 1510 and is marked for exception recovery and becomes the oldest instruction in first level ROB 1510, it may cause the pseudo-retirement mechanism to be stopped. In an embodiment, when an instruction that cannot be executed speculatively becomes the oldest instruction in first level ROB 1510, this may cause the pseudo-retirement mechanism to be stopped. In another embodiment, when ROB 1520 becomes full, this may cause the pseudo-retirement mechanism to be stopped. In another embodiment, when a counter indicates that a number of instructions that have been pseudo-retired exceeds a threshold, this may cause the pseudo-retirement mechanism to be stopped. Once the pseudo-retirement mechanism is stopped, instructions may no longer be moved from the first level ROB 1510 to the second level ROB 1520. The instructions which are already in the second level ROB 1520 will continue to execute and eventually all the instructions in the second level ROB 1520 will complete and update speculative state, or an exception or misprediction may occur that may cause the restoration of the checkpointed state. In an embodiment, once all the instructions in the second level ROB 1520 have updated speculative state, the second level ROB 1520 will no longer have any entries which are tracking uncommitted instructions, and therefore, the second level ROB 1520 and any associated structures/mechanisms may be powered down. In an embodiment, when the second level ROB 1520 is empty (i.e., all instructions tracked by ROB 1520 have updated speculative state), the checkpoint established as described above may no longer be required and may be discarded. For example, checkpointed Perfmon counters 1522 and checkpointed instruction pointer 1524 may be invalidated (no longer active). Note that while the checkpoint is active, no instructions actually commit, but when the checkpoint is invalidated, all of the instructions that were pseudo-retired since the time the checkpoint was taken to the last pseudo-retired instruction are committed logically at once (many instructions may be committed in a single logical step).

In an embodiment, the two level ROB design described above may be extended with multiple checkpoints instead of a single checkpoint. After saving a first checkpoint, additional checkpoints may be saved to break apart the region of pseudo-retired instructions into multiple regions of pseudo-retired instructions, so as to reduce the risk of checkpoint recovery that require re-executing a large number of instructions. In this embodiment, events that would require restoring a checkpoint to handle may restore to the nearest older checkpoint to the instruction requiring recovery. Note that in this embodiment, checkpoints may be freed without transitioning back to the state where the first level ROB contains architectural state. In an embodiment, the pseudo-retirement mechanism may save additional checkpoints when one or more conditions have been reached. For example, when a certain quantity of instructions has been pseudo-retired, an additional checkpoint may be saved. Similarly, when a certain number of cycles have passed since the previous checkpoint was saved, an additional checkpoint may be saved. In another embodiment, an additional checkpoint may be saved when ROB 1520 becomes full. In another embodiment, an additional checkpoint may be saved when a counter indicates a specific number of a type of instruction have been pseudo-retired after the previous checkpoint. In another embodiment, an additional checkpoint may be saved when a specific number of control flow instructions have been pseudo-retired after the previous checkpoint. In another embodiment, an additional checkpoint may be saved when a specific number of instructions that may take an exception have been pseudo-retired after the previous checkpoint.

In an embodiment, the two level ROB approach described above may be combined with a ROB compaction scheme. In this embodiment, each first level ROB entry may store information associated with multiple instructions. The multiple instructions may be adjacent to each other in program order. When the pseudo-retirement mechanism is triggered, each entry in the first level ROB 1510 tracking at least one incomplete instruction is moved to the second level ROB 1520. In an embodiment, when an entry is moved from the first level ROB 1510 to the second level ROB 1520, all instructions tracked by that entry (including the complete instructions) may be moved to the second level ROB 1520. Each entry in the first level ROB 1510 that is exclusively tracking complete instructions may be pseudeo-retired and thus removed from the first level ROB 1510. The checkpoint mechanism, the PerfMon counters 1512, and the instruction pointer 1514 may function as previously described.

FIG. 16 illustrates a method 1600 to pseudo-retire entries according to an embodiment. In an embodiment, the method 1600 may store some architectural state in the first level ROB 1601. While storing architectural state in the first level ROB, the first level ROB may monitor whether one or more pseudo-retirement trigger conditions have occurred (step 1602). In response to detecting a pseudo-retirement trigger condition, a checkpoint may be created 1604. After a checkpoint has been created, a contiguous block of instructions may be pseudo-retired from the first level ROB 1510 in program order. This contiguous block may contain complete and incomplete instructions. The incomplete entries from the first level ROB 1510 may be moved to the second level ROB 1520 (step 1606). The complete entries may be removed from the first level ROB 1510 (step 1608). The pseudo-retirement of the instructions may continue in program order until a stop condition is encountered 1610. In response to one or more stop conditions, pseudo-retirement of the instructions may be stopped 1612. Optionally, the second level ROB 1520 and associated structures/mechanisms may be powered down when all instructions from the second level ROB 1520 have updated the speculative state (step 1614) and the ROB transitions to state 1601. The second level ROB 1520 may be re-powered (if necessary) and method 1600 may be repeated when one or more pseudo-retirement conditions are detected.

Utilizing a two level ROB instead of a large single level ROB may be advantageous because the two level ROB may accommodate an equal number of uncommitted instructions as a large single level ROB while minimizing the drawbacks associated with a large single level ROB. Within the region of pseudo-retired instructions, the ratio of incomplete instructions to complete instructions is typically small and therefore, in a two level ROB, the size of the second level ROB may be much smaller than the size of the first level ROB. Thus, the negative impact on circuit timing, area, and power usage is minimized. For example, a two level ROB with the first level ROB having 192 entries and a second level ROB having 80 entries may track the same number of uncommitted instructions as a large single level ROB with hundreds or thousands of entries.

In the aforementioned description, specific sizes of ROBs are discussed in certain embodiments. These sizes are illustrative and are not meant to restrict the scope of the invention.

Specific mechanisms for managing the register state and memory state of the system have been excluded from the foregoing specification for clarity purposes. A variety of techniques may be employed to manage register and memory state.

In the foregoing specification, a detailed description has been given with reference to specific exemplary embodiments. It will, however, be evident that various modifications and changes may be made thereto without departing from the broader spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims. The specification and drawings are, accordingly, to be regarded in an illustrative sense rather than a restrictive sense. Furthermore, the foregoing use of embodiment and other exemplarily language does not necessarily refer to the same embodiment or the same example, but may refer to different and distinct embodiments, as well as potentially the same embodiment. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A method for operating a re-order buffer having a first level and a second level, the method comprising: in response to detecting at least one condition for changing an operating mode of the re-order buffer is met, changing the operating mode of the re-order buffer from a first operating mode to a second operating mode by: creating a checkpoint of a current state of a thread; and moving at least one of incomplete instructions from the first level of the re-order buffer to the second level of the re-order buffer, wherein each incomplete instruction is one of currently executing and awaiting execution; wherein the incomplete instructions in the first level of the re-order buffer are not moved to the second level of the re-order buffer in the first operating mode.
 2. The method of claim 1, further comprising: in response to detecting a checkpoint condition, saving a second checkpoint of a second state of the thread.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein each instruction is a micro-operation.
 4. The method of claim 1, further comprising: in response to detecting at least one of a branch misprediction, an exception, a trap, an interrupt, and an event associated with an incomplete instruction tracked by the second level, restoring the thread to the created checkpoint.
 5. The method of claim 1, further comprising: in response to detecting at least one stop condition for stopping the second operating mode of the re-order buffer is met, retaining incomplete instructions in the first level.
 6. The method of claim 1, wherein creating the checkpoint includes saving a current state of an instruction pointer and a current state of performance monitoring counters.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one condition includes whether an instruction from the first level is in an incomplete state for a predetermined period of time.
 8. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one condition includes whether the first level includes a predetermined number of instructions.
 9. The method of claim 1, wherein the second level is one of indexed directly and indexed via content addressable memory.
 10. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one entry of the re-order buffer tracks two instructions.
 11. A processor comprising: a re-order buffer including a first level and a second level; a retirement unit; a plurality of execution units; wherein the processor is configured to: in response to detecting at least one condition for changing an operating mode of the re-order buffer is met, change the operating mode of the re-order buffer from a first operating mode to a second operating mode by: creating a checkpoint of a current state of a thread; and moving at least one of incomplete instructions from the first level of the re-order buffer to the second level of the re-order buffer, wherein each incomplete instruction is one of currently executing and awaiting execution; wherein the incomplete instructions in the first level of the re-order buffer are not moved to the second level of the re-order buffer in the first operating mode.
 12. The processor of claim 11, wherein the processor is further configured to: in response to detecting a checkpoint condition, save a second checkpoint of a second state of the thread.
 13. The processor of claim 11, wherein each instruction is a micro-operation.
 14. The processor of claim 11, wherein the processor is further configured to: in response to detecting at least one of a branch misprediction, an exception, a trap, an interrupt, and an event associated with an incomplete instruction tracked by the second level, restore the thread to the created checkpoint.
 15. The processor of claim 11, wherein the processor is further configured to: in response to detecting at least one stop condition for stopping the second operating mode of the re-order buffer is met, retain incomplete instructions in the first level.
 16. The processor of claim 11, wherein creating the checkpoint includes saving a current state of an instruction pointer and a current state of performance monitoring counters.
 17. The processor of claim 11, wherein the at least one condition includes whether an instruction from the first level is in an incomplete state for a predetermined period of time.
 18. The processor of claim 11, wherein the at least one condition includes whether the first level includes a predetermined number of instructions.
 19. The processor of claim 11, wherein the second level is one of indexed directly and indexed via content addressable memory.
 20. The processor of claim 11, wherein at least one entry of the re-order buffer tracks two instructions.
 21. A non-transitory machine-readable medium having stored thereon an instruction, which if performed by a machine causes the machine to perform a method for operating a re-order buffer having a first level and a second level, the method comprising: in response to detecting at least one condition for changing an operating mode of the re-order buffer is met, changing the operating mode of the re-order buffer from a first operating mode to a second operating mode by: creating a checkpoint of a current state of a thread; and moving at least one of incomplete instructions from the first level of the re-order buffer to the second level of the re-order buffer, wherein each incomplete instruction is one of currently executing and awaiting execution; wherein the incomplete instructions in the first level of the re-order buffer are not moved to the second level of the re-order buffer in the first operating mode.
 22. The machine-readable medium of claim 21, wherein the method further comprises: in response to detecting a checkpoint condition, saving a second checkpoint of a second state of the thread.
 23. The machine-readable medium of claim 21, wherein each instruction is a micro-operation.
 24. The machine-readable medium of claim 21, wherein the method further comprises: in response to detecting at least one of a branch misprediction, an exception, a trap, an interrupt, and an event associated with an incomplete instruction tracked by the second level, restoring the thread to the created checkpoint.
 25. The machine-readable medium of claim 21, wherein the method further comprises: in response to detecting at least one stop condition for stopping the second operating mode of the re-order buffer is met, retaining incomplete instructions in the first level.
 26. The machine-readable medium of claim 21, wherein creating the checkpoint includes saving a current state of an instruction pointer and a current state of performance monitoring counters.
 27. A system comprising: a non-transitory memory to store a plurality of instructions; a processor coupled to the memory to execute the plurality of instructions, the processor configured to operate a re-order buffer having a first level and a second level by performing: in response to detecting at least one condition for changing an operating mode of the re-order buffer is met, change the operating mode of the re-order buffer from a first operating mode to a second operating mode by: creating a checkpoint of a current state of a thread; and moving at least one of incomplete instructions from the first level of the re-order buffer to the second level of the re-order buffer, wherein each incomplete instruction is one of currently executing and awaiting execution; wherein the incomplete instructions in the first level of the re-order buffer are not moved to the second level of the re-order buffer in the first operating mode.
 28. The system of claim 27, wherein the processor is further configured to: in response to detecting a checkpoint condition, save a second checkpoint of a second state of the thread.
 29. The system of claim 27, wherein each instruction is a micro-operation.
 30. The system of claim 27, wherein the processor is further configured to: in response to detecting at least one of a branch misprediction, an exception, a trap, an interrupt, and an event associated with an incomplete instruction tracked by the second level, restore the thread to the created checkpoint. 